Afterparty
by Romann
Summary: Wilson thinks it's time to move on. Chase wants to be remembered, and has a parting gift for him. SLASH [Written for this year's round of santahousemd]


Reclined on the sofa, Chase observed silently as Wilson closed the front door with a sigh.

'Rough night?'

Wilson jumped at the sound and turned to him wearily.

'Yeah...'

'Emergency?'

Wilson nodded. 'Another kid winning the lottery twice, like your boss says. Hodgkin's plus Ewing's.'

'Poor kid.'

'It's under control now. For the time being, at least. Why aren't you at the function?'

Chase stood, with a shrug. 'It sort of died down when you left. Thought I might as well come home to a good book,' he gestured to Wilson's dog-eared copy of _1984_.

'Good for you,' Wilson mumbled, hanging his dress jacket by the door.

'That'll be ruined if you don't hang it properly.'

Wilson went back for the jacket and laid it on the back of a chair, plopping himself down on it as well, head in his hands. A tense silence followed.

Chase eventually broke it, crossing the room to pour himself a drink, his back to Wilson.

'Is Eleanor still unresponsive to chemo?'

The tension was suddenly palpable. Wilson craned his neck to face Chase's back, a mere three feet away. 'You know her name...?'

'House brought in her file earlier today, while you were in the clinic - had us diagnosing her for ages. He lost interest in her when it turned out she didn't have Ewing's, after all.'

Wilson registered the information with some difficulty, only now realising that Chase hadn't yet changed out of his dress shirt and pants.

'She was stable when I left, by the way,' Chase added, finally turning to Wilson and exposing a loosened shirt and very dishevelled hair, but otherwise impeccable looks. 'So, really. Why won't you stop insulting my intelligence?'

'Chase...'

'No, really. We're both adults. It might actually be easier if we behave like, you know, grown-ups.' Chase sat back on the sofa, facing Wilson.

Wilson massaged the creases out of his forehead and sighed heavily.

'Should I have gone back to my own place?' Chase said tentatively.

Wilson was silent.

'Should I have packed my bags while I was waiting?'

Wilson shook his head, more in introspection than as an answer.

'Help me out, here. This is my life, I need to plan my immediate future.'

'This doesn't have to...'

'What exactly is _this_?'

Wilson sighed again, breathed in, and blurted out, 'I'm getting married.'

All things considered, Chase's reaction was remarkably nonchalant. He put down his drink and inched closer to Wilson. 'House finally said yes?'

Wilson threw him a disgusted look.

'Honestly! I just want to know the competition!'

'There's no... competition. You knew this was eventually going to happen.'

'No, I didn't. You overestimate me.'

'Don't make this harder than it is.'

'... it _is_? Funny, it sounded like you didn't mean to tell me at all. Were you planning on another staged emergency for your wedding day? Perhaps a night shift for the wedding night?'

'Spare me.'

'Spare _you_?'

Wilson picked up Chase's drink and had a sip. 'This has been great. It... still is. But it's not enough for me. It never was. And you always knew that.'

Chase eyed him questioningly.

'Maybe House is right,' Wilson went on, 'Maybe I am a masochist, maybe I need to be married to feel it's real, maybe I do get off on the pain of the divorce-'

'Oh, spare _me_. Your only claim to masochism is putting up with House for so long.'

Wilson shrugged. 'Well, I don't know how to explain it. I like you. I do. But she's... something else. It's different. It's...'

Chase smirked. '... a new toy. Just so I know, am I expected to come running to you when this thing crashes and burns, some three months from now?'

Wilson downed the rest of the drink and stood. 'Good night, Chase.'

Chase let out a sardonic laugh. 'Erm, where do I sleep?'

'Wherever you want. Just let me be,' Wilson replied tiredly, making his way to the bathroom.

Chase sat alone, absorbing the surreal conversation and registering, at last, that he had been forsaken for Mrs. Wilson n.º4. There was something maddeningly irritating in the thought that, no matter what he did, it would have turned out this way. Even more irritating was the knowledge that their apparent idyll of months couldn't beat the fact that Wilson was hard-wired to prefer women. He was just made like that.

Well, he certainly wasn't about to go down anonymously.

Chase ran his hands through his hair and followed the sound of the running water. The bathroom door was unlocked. Wilson was absently unbuttoning his shirt, shoes haphazardly set by the toilet. He barely registered the hands circling his waist, until they unbuckled his belt and pulled out the shirt tails.

'Chase,' he warned.

'Hmm?'

'Stop that.'

'Why? Don't you supposedly get off on divorces? This a bit of a divorce, isn't it?

Wilson swatted Chase's hands away and turned to him, being instantly trapped between the sink and Chase's wandering hands. 'Sex isn't going to make anything better, Chase.'

'When did that change?'

'Chase,' Wilson called more forcefully, as his trousers slipped down his legs.

'What...?!', Chase grumbled, from the crook of Wilson's neck.

'Get off.'

'I intend to,' Chase confided.

Wilson let out a swear word and slithered a hand between them, cupping Chase through his clothes and noting, with bitter satisfaction, that Chase momentarily stopped moving.

'Ok,' he clipped out, squeezing rather roughly, 'Is this what you want? Is this all?'

Chase leered and pulled Wilson to himself unexpectedly, shoving them both under the running shower.

Wilson broke the kiss, catching just a flash of the vulnerable, content lover he knew before Chase locked eyes with him and started rocking against his hand, mouthing obscenities at him and grabbing Wilson's shirt to pull him closer.

'Is this what you want?' Wilson repeated in a whisper, aroused in spite of himself, 'Is this how you want it...?'

Chase leered at him, saying something absolutely unprintable and rocking with more enthusiasm. Wilson began to get lost in the moment, in the mouth just inches from his, in the feel of the leg sliding around his to coach him into movement. Then, as the drenched shirt sending waves of frostbite through his skin was removed from his body, it occurred to him that this was an almost exact re-enactment of the very first time they'd had sex, months ago, in the hospital's showers, after a gruelling night that both assumed exempted them from responsibility. It had started just like this, with him in control, the freezing water making them more and more alert to the other's reaction, their expensive clothing being treated with utmost indifference under his own adolescent fervour, until Chase...

Chase used the wall as leverage and slammed him against it, inching away from the kiss Wilson was seeking.

'Who is she, after all?'

Wilson blinked away the water. 'What?'

'Not Brenda. She would have bragged to the whole hospital. Linda is too independent, Jennifer is too cold...' Chase listed all the attractive females he could recall, in a voice that was much too strong for someone peeling away another's underwear against a bathroom wall.

'Chase!'

'I'm curious! I want to know who that wonder is that made you give me up,' Chase countered, hands sliding around Wilson's buttocks and further in, 'Christine... is a virgin... Isab--'

'Not anymore,' Wilson snapped, moving sulkily away from Chase's hands and only managing to nestle against Chase's groin.

Chase's eyes widened theatrically. '... I never would have thought. What a great lay she must be...!'

'She is, actually,' Wilson ground out, trying to will his erection away.

'Better than me?'

'I'm marrying her, aren't I?'

'Right, I forgot. Well, you need a stag night to remember, if that bore of a blonde is all you have to look forward to,' Chase awkwardly balanced himself against Wilson to toe off his own bottoms, and Wilson flattened himself against the wall dramatically, arms wide open, the picture of tragedy come to life.

Chase had to swallow a laugh. 'No,' he informed Wilson sweetly, 'you like to be on top. Might as well give you that parting gift.'

He swirled on the wet floor so that he was now between Wilson and the wall, and brought his mouth a millimetre from Wilson's. 'Unless, of course, you're not up to it,' he emphasised his point with a curling of fingers that had Wilson momentarily seeing stars. When his eyes could focus again, all that Wilson had in mind was wiping Chase's arrogant smirk from his face. He wasn't a freak. He didn't need this boy with delusions of importance. And he _could_ make a marriage work.

Chase's smirk didn't waver as Wilson fumbled around with the soap and repositioned them. As Wilson entered him in one, long, thrust, though, it seemed to morph into a smile - a smile rather reminiscent of Christine's. The way Chase's body was entwined with his, too, was oddly reminiscent of her. The hand pushing his hair out of his face resembled that other, who had recently taken to coif him in the corridors. The candid, innocent way Chase embraced him was very familiar, and yet... Wilson tried to reach for the tap, stop the water and clear his mind, but Chase stopped him, his mouth reverting to a smirk, the languid rhythm Chase had set now unmistakeably Chase's, the hair falling onto his face much so much fairer than hers, the patterns traced by those hands much more provocative than hers.

Wilson closed his eyes, clawing at the memory of her, trying to keep in mind all those reasons why he'd picked her. Chase's lips brushed his, unmistakeably Chase's, not half as needy as hers, not half as needy as his own. Just a brush, as Wilson opened his eyes, Christine's image overlapping with Chase's, Chase's moves mimicking hers almost to perfection... Wilson braced himself against the wall as Chase's muscles began to tense around him, as his own moves turned erratic. Chaser laid his forehead against Wilson's, mouth hovering half an inch from his again, but never closer, his bright eyes so near that Wilson almost couldn't make out their colour. Wilson could swear that a sultry 'Oh, Doctor Wilson...!' had just made itself heard.

When he came to, though, Chase was airily, if wetly, disentangling himself and picking up his clothing as though nothing had happened. In a matter of seconds, Wilson was alone, his heart still racing, fully aware that he would never touch his fiancée again without thinking of Chase.


End file.
